All in the Family, Brothers Wage War on Uncle Fidel

By ABBY GOODNOUGH; Terry Aguayo contributed reporting for this article.

Published: March 8, 2006

If Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart had his way, Cuba's baseball team would be barred from the first World Baseball Classic this month.

Mr. Diaz-Balart, the Florida Republican who is vice chairman of the House Rules Committee, even asked Major League Baseball to let a makeshift team of Cuban exiles and defectors play instead, a proposal that was spurned.

''It is difficult to believe,'' Mr. Diaz-Balart wrote the organization, ''that M.L.B. would have invited a team from apartheid-era South Africa to participate in a tournament. Yet you have invited a totalitarian dictatorship which has murdered thousands and imprisoned hundreds of thousands for the 'crime' of supporting freedom and democracy.''

Mr. Diaz-Balart, 51, is Mr. Castro's denouncer in chief in South Florida and Washington, treating anything that could benefit his government like a toxic threat. He sets the tone of exile politics in Miami, signs off on changes in the Bush administration's Cuba policy and keeps heat on Congress to reject any weakening of the trade embargo.

But in a twist that is not widely known outside Miami, Mr. Diaz-Balart is also Mr. Castro's nephew. His father, once Mr. Castro's close friend, became his ''foremost and most consistent opponent'' leading up to the revolution, Mr. Diaz-Balart said -- even though Mr. Castro had married his sister.

The half-century battle between Miami and Havana has driven countless families apart, with some pledging loyalty to Mr. Castro and others fleeing Cuba. Even the custody tug-of-war over Eli?Gonz?z, a Cuban boy, was at its core a nasty family feud. But few such rifts have had the prominence and intensity of Castro versus Diaz-Balart.

Like his father, who warned the Cuban Congress in 1955 that freeing Mr. Castro from prison would bring ''many days of mourning, of pain, of bloodshed and of misery,'' Mr. Diaz-Balart, elected in 1992, has poured his soul into fighting for a democratic Cuba. His younger brother, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a fellow Republican who was elected to Congress in 2002, is also devoted to the cause.

Mr. Castro once called the Diaz-Balarts his ''most repulsive enemies,'' reports Ann Louise Bardach, whose book ''Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana,'' explored the family divisions that the revolution spawned.

For many Cuban-Americans in Miami, especially older ones who lost wealth and power after the revolution, the Diaz-Balarts symbolize the lost potential and the commitment of Mr. Castro's enemies to retrieving it, no matter how long it takes.

''They are the embodiment of what this community thinks and feels,'' said Ninoska Perez Castellon, a popular host on Radio Mamb?

Mr. Diaz-Balart's father, Rafael, was a classmate of Mr. Castro, and Rafael's younger sister, Mirta, married Mr. Castro in 1948. But the friendship died after Fulgencio Batista took over Cuba in 1952, Rafael Diaz-Balart joined his government and Mr. Castro tried to overthrow it, landing in prison.

Mirta Diaz-Balart filed for divorce soon afterward, and Mr. Castro seized custody of their son, Fidelito, after taking control of Cuba in 1959.

Rafael Diaz-Balart was visiting Paris with his wife and sons when Mr. Castro took power, and they never went home. Rafael did not enter American politics, but he was the most trusted adviser of Lincoln and Mario until he died last year at 79. Two other sons also live in Miami: Rafael, an investment banker, and Jose, a news anchor for Telemundo, the Spanish-language network.

Ms. Bardach said Rafael Diaz-Balart had groomed two of his children to be political leaders in hope that they would return to Cuba and fulfill his own destiny there.

But Lincoln Diaz-Balart said his family resented the assumption that theirs was a personal vendetta, which he said had dogged them ever since his father warned the Cuban Congress not to free Mr. Castro.

''It's a way in which they systematically tried to discredit us,'' he said, ''by saying, 'It's personal.' ''

So, too, he said, is the popular rumor here that Mr. Diaz-Balart wants to succeed Mr. Castro as Cuba's ruler. ''All attacks like that are ways to impugn my motives and to not focus on our ideas and our ideals,'' he said.

His real goal, he said, is to teach Cuban history on the island once his political goals for it -- democratic elections, release of political prisoners, and creation of political parties, unions and a free press -- are met.

Mr. Diaz-Balart, whose suburban district is more than 70 percent Hispanic, wrote the legislation codifying the embargo against Cuba. But he does not want to be seen as solely focused on Cuba. His district has growing numbers of Nicaraguan, Colombian and other Hispanic immigrants, and he has supported legislation that benefits them. He recently fought a plan to end a temporary work program for Central Americans, which the Department of Homeland Security ultimately decided to extend.

''If you don't focus on my immigration work and my fight for Central Americans, Latin Americans and Hispanics generally,'' he said, ''then it's a very incomplete story.''

With Mr. Castro still in power decades after the embargo began, some call the strategy a failure. Yet President Bush remains firmly in the Diaz-Balart camp. In January, his Justice Department charged two professors here with spying for Mr. Castro and stepped up its crackdown on travel to Cuba, suspending the license of a South Florida travel agency that had booked trips to the island.

''We are batting 1.000,'' Mr. Diaz-Balart said in an interview, sitting in his office amid photographs of jailed Cuban dissidents. ''There were times in the past where I was batting .100, but we're not there anymore.''

But that brings us back to baseball, and Mr. Diaz-Balart's failure to persuade the Bush administration to bar the Cuban team from the tournament. The Cubans will play Panama on Wednesday in San Juan, P.R.

Mr. Bush reversed an earlier decision and granted the Cuban team a license after Major League Baseball guaranteed that Cuba would not receive American money from the contest. Denying the license might have quashed the entire tournament, because other countries had threatened to withdraw and the International Baseball Federation had said it might not sanction the event if Cuba was left out.

If Mr. Diaz-Balart felt betrayed, he did not show it, using tame words like ''lamentable'' to describe Mr. Bush's decision. He hopes some Cuban team members will defect, he said, embarrassing Mr. Castro.

''Perseverance and perspective until victory,'' Mr. Diaz-Balart said. ''I haven't been given many things, but I've been given ample, limitless patience.''

Photos: At political events in Cuba, the Diaz-Balarts' father, Rafael, in 1958 at top, and their grandfather Rafael Jose, above in center, in 1933. (Photo by Family photos); Representatives Mario, left, and Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida are determined foes of the government of Fidel Castro, their uncle. (Photo by Richard Patterson for The New York Times)